Huw joined as the Commercial API Director for Open Banking, an entity set up by the UK Competition and Markets Authority to create innovative technology (APIs), data standards and the governance structures enabling the UK to imple­ment Open Banking in February 2019. He is also the CEO and Founder for Frontfoot, which helps businesses under­stand and find new opportunities in a constantly changing world. In his career, Huw has been held roles with HSBC as the Global Head of Payments, MasterCard as Head of Emerging Payments and with Barclays Bank as the International Business Development Director.

Antony Jenkins is a financial technology expert and entrepreneur. He has also led a global FTSE 100 financial services business as Barclays CEO. Now as director at Blockchain, a leading software platform, founder and executive chairman of 10x Future Technologies, Antony has a vision to make banking ten times better for customers, banks and society. Anthony is also co-currently chairman at Currencies Direct, authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, as the first non-bank foreign exchange payments specialists in the UK.

Founder and partner at the London Co-Investment Fund, John Spindler is also CEO of Capital Enterprise and an angel investor at UXCam focused on London based “game changing” businesses. The latest portfolio under his charge as co-founder of AI Seed is the source of investment and support for the UK’s AI & machine learning start-ups. John has over 19 years of activity in the field of consultancy and financial technology.

Jason Williams founded The Fintech Power 50 in early 2018. With over 450 nominees, Fintech Power 50 has emerged as the list to watch for the consortium of the best fintech products and services today. Ranging from small start-ups to global industry behemoths, polls close at the end of August and members are actively promoted to a global audience to secure strategic and investment opportunities.

Nick Slater is an avid tech entrepreneur. He co-founded Dibbz and bootstrapped the company up to the leading field of reward-based advertising, managing client relationship and raising investment. Nick has a Masters in Technology Entrepreneurship using his knowledge to help London’s start-up scene at Capital Enterprise. Also currently as a Board Observer of Astroscreen, Nick is conversant in machine learning and disinformation analysis to detect social media manipulation.

Diana Avila leads the team that expands TransferWise’s operations internationally, working with financial partners and regulators as Global Head of Banking. Prior to that she expanded TransferWise to Latin America and created a network of infrastructure and financial partners while at International Project Finance Association. As a lawyer trained and practicing finance and banking law, Diana has a strong understanding of regulatory frameworks but is not afraid to break barriers for innovation.

Uttiyo is the Head of Strategy & Innovation for HSBC UK Digital Bank and leads the Open Banking & PSD2 Commercialisation team. Previously he was the Head of Everyday Banking for HSBCs retail bank in the UK. Prior to this, Dasgupta spent the past 13 years at HSBC, across numerous roles from Group Head of Analytics in wholesale banking, Product Pricing and Analytics, Head of Credit Risk and as Chief Risk Officer of the UK and European retail bank.
Before joining HSBC, Dasgupta worked across 7 different countries in Asia and Middle East in customer facing Corporate and Retail Banking executive roles at Standard Chartered Bank.

As the formal Head of Fintech Partnerships & Strategy, Kaushalya Somasundaram leads the partnership and corporate venturing for HSBC’s core businesses including Global Liquidity and Cash Management, Global Trade and Receivables Finance, Custody and Global Markets. She has led HSBC investments in Fintech companies of strategic importance and the bank’s forays into the world of distributed ledgers. Kaushalya has held a variety of senior roles across HSBC including Strategy & Planning, Corporate Development and Group Audit. Kaushalya has also been recognised in the Brummell’s 2016 list of the most inspirational women innovators in London.

Entrepreneur Bob Blower, founder of Solid and a self-proclaimed technology and business-focused professional, has worked his way around the globe covering different enterprises as diverse as crypto assets derivatives, government debt financing, supply chain finance, trade and payments, and cash management. His latest work adventure brought him to Hong Kong where he is working for a leading crypto company, creating pivot digital asset. In his younger days, Blower worked for the UK Ministry of Defence, British Banker’s Association and Reuters. He later joined HSBC in Hong Kong, then Standard Bank in Johannesburg before heading to the Middle East and other parts of the world for other job opportunities. He is also the founder and chairman of a company providing innovation which supports small and medium enterprises in Africa.

Johnny Mortimer Hendry is the co-founder of UBIQ Cyber Ltd, a sophisticated cybersecurity made accessible and affordable to business owners. He served in the British Army and was on the frontline, facing both physical and cyber threats to coalition forces while in the service of the UK Special Forces Support Group. He developed new strategies to target, track and neutralise threats and was awarded by HM The Queen for his work in Afghanistan. His career in cybersecurity started through a British Army Scholarship with the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Hendry and other former employees working for different organisations within the British government (GCHQ, MI5, MOD, CIA) started UBIQ in 2018. Prior to that, he was in investment banking where he worked for Morgan Stanley and Barclays in their Institutional Equities Division.

Dan Benham is CEO of Tendo solutions which delivers a range of intelligence-based security services. These include worldwide investigations, due diligence (KYC, KYS, CDD, EDD, AML, CFT, BS7858 security screening), horizon scanning, forensics, regulatory compliance, pre-litigation research, vulnerability and threat horizon scanning, and training solutions. He began working in security in 1990 as an investigation operative. Then, in 1992 joined the Metropolitan Police and eventually specialised in intelligence within CID. On becoming an intelligence analyst, he undertook analytical and forensics training, and worked alongside forensics, proactive and reactive police colleagues. Additionally, he liaised with external law enforcement colleagues and other agencies. Dan was attached to the senior management team (SMT), which he briefed on matters of strategic as well as tactical intelligence analysis. He went on to represent the Metropolitan Police in a specialist UK-wide forensics project coordinated by the Home Office.

Diana Biggs is Global Head of Innovation for HSBC Private Banking. In this role, she leads on the development and management of the GPB innovation process, bringing emerging Fintech trends to GPB and the establishment of an innovation pipeline to incubate and test new ideas. Prior to joining GPB, she was Head of Digital Innovation, UK & Europe for RBWM, where she led work across fintech partnerships and pilots, innovation knowledge sharing and capabilities building, and the exploration of emerging technologies. In addition to her role at HSBC, she is Head Tutor for University of Oxford Said Business School’s Blockchain Strategy Programme, a Board Member of the Open Identity Exchange (OIX) and WEF Digital Leaders of Europe and a member of the EU Commission’s Blockchain Observatory Use Case Working Group. Previously, Diana worked across technology and financial services, both as an advisor and with roles including Vice President of Growth and Partnerships for Uphold.com, Chief Strategy Officer of Soko, and a Management Consultant with Oliver Wyman Financial Services.

Chris Michael is an experienced industry expert in building cross functional teams, technology platforms and digital products for global brands. He is currently leading development of the UK Open Banking Standard, including creation of the collaboration and governance model which covers both regulatory compliance and commercial requirements. Chris is a strategic innovator and founder of Ozone, a fintech providing PSD2/Open API technology solutions and advisory services to banks, third parties and regulators in UK, Europe and Globally.
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Ali has more than 15 years experience in tech engineering, and has worked in payment for the past eight years, most recently at PayPal and Wonga prior to joining Yoyo in 2017.

Sean is Oak North’s Chief Information Officer, based in London. As one of the first commercial engineers at Palantir Technologies in Europe, he led trader oversight partnerships with large financial institutions, particularly Credit Suisse, which led to being co-head of the JV called Signac. Before Palantir, Sean was a strategist at Goldman Sachs for 8 years, working in a number of areas including equities, fixed income and algorithmic trading. Sean has worked with cloud and distributed computation technologies for 16 years, from setting up the first compute farm at GS to being a full cloud-based SaaS solution provider at ACORN.

Jodi Yang joined Balderton as Head of Investor Relations in 2018. She was previously a partner at B Capital, a global venture capital firm started by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. Prior to B Capital, she was a founding partner of Gratia Capital, a spin-out of Canyon Capital, the $25 billion hedge fund. Yang was an entrepreneur, co-founding Novo Holdings in Shanghai, which was ultimately purchased by KKR.

Renier Lemmens is a Venture Partner with DN Capital focusing on Fintech. He currently also serves as Chairman of TransferGo, Divido, Mojo Mortgages, and Hostmaker. He is a non executive director at Arion Bank and Senior Advisor and Professor of Fintech and innovation at the London Institute of banking and finance. He recently served as board member of Revolut. In the past, Renier served as CEO of PayPal EMEA and member of its global executive team. He was COO of Barclays International Retail and Commercial Banking. Renier was an officer of GE Capital where he served as Chairman and CEO of Budapest Bank, and SVP Business Development for the Americas. Renier was a partner with McKinsey & Company in London, New Delhi, and San Francisco.

Dinis Guarda is an author, advisor, serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Ztudium which manages Blocksdna / Intelligenthq / Lifesdna. He has been creating and building ventures focused on global growth, 360 digital strategies, sustainable innovation, blockchain, fintech, AI and new emerging business models such as ICOs and tokenomics. His upcoming books “How Businesses and Governments can Prosper with Fintech, Blockchain and AI?”, “Blockchain, AI and Crypto Economics – The Next Tsunami?” last the “Tokenomics and ICOs – How to be good at the new digital world of finance / Crypto” will be launched soon. Dinis has advised and was responsible for some of the top global financial organisations, such as those who belong to the top 100 cryptocurrencies and Fortune 500 companies, like Reuters, MasterCard, P&G, Philips, Vodafone, and Nike. He is also often listed in various global fintech, blockchain, AI, and social media industry top lists as an influencer.

Sam serves as Principal, Business Development at Motive Partners. He is leading Business Development at Motive Partners, and joining with a broad range of financial services experience, from payments to investment banking, and government initiatives to industry trade organizations, as the Chief of staff to UK Prime Minister’s Business Ambassador for Fintech. He began his career with Barclays in Payments Reengineering and subsequently worked in a number of areas of the bank including equity capital markets. He holds broad range of experience in financial services, payments to investment banking and government initiatives to industry trade organizations. He was selected as young leader of the future by the New Entrepreneurs Foundation in 2013.

Prof. Sally Eaves is CEO and Founder of Aspirational Futures, a professor in Advanced Technologies and a Global Strategic Advisor on Digital Transformation. She specialises in the application of emergent technology, notably blockchain and AI for both business transformation and social impact at scale. A highly experienced CTO, international keynote speaker and author, Sally was an inaugural recipient of the Frontier Technology and Social Impact award, presented at the United Nations in 2018 and has been described as the ‘torchbearer for ethical tech’.

Graeme McGowan is currently the director of Cyber Security & Risk for Optimal Risk Management Ltd, chief information security office (CISO) and senior tutor, as well as cyber advisor to The Global Cyber Academy, and CISO for the Sokin Group, which provides secure and encrypted global money transfer by meeting market demands and disrupting the current exchange methods of pricing. Staffed by former UK Government security and communications specialists, The Global Cyber Academy provides cutting-edge online and workshop security teaching by accredited tutors and senior-level practitioners. As an independent cyber and security consultant, McGowan provides specialist risk advisory services and proprietary converged and physical security services to public and private sector organisations, providing a complete end-to-end solution, whether for risk-centric requirements or security-driven priorities. In 2008, McGowan took early retirement from a government intelligence agency, where during his final two years he was seconded to the Home Office post-7/7 as the first senior government communications officer, and was also responsible for developing the Code of Practice for RIPA Part III, which provided law enforcement agencies and public authorities the appropriate legal powers to access encrypted data.

John Holder has over 20 years’ experience in VR and Immersive technology. In 2016 he was invited to exhibit Immersive Content at Cannes Film Festival, Artrooms London, Berlinale, Sundance, Paris VR Festival, Venice Film Festival, The BFi and UKVR rest. He has specialised in MR, VR, 4k live-stream & recorded 360 video, photogrammetry and AR production. He is creator of virtual and mixed reality experiences for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Microsoft Hololens, Samsung GearVR, Google Daydream and Cardboard utilising games engines and WebGL. He has a focus on futurology and humanitarian issues, and real-world uses of immersive communication technologies. He holds a PhD in Digital Arts, M.Sc. in Virtual Reality and believer of immersion, interaction and innovation.

Paul Forrest is the Chair of Purple Management Consulting and MBN Solutions, both of whom are actively engaged in Blockchain initiatives.  In addition, he is a Founder Member of the IdeaGist Global Blockchain Incubator and a mentor at Virgin Startup.

He has more than thirty years’ experience of helping to solve complex business problems, deliver transformation goals and to achieve tangible strategic outcomes. Hands on and deep thinking, he has worked with many FTSE 100 clients, Global 500 businesses and major Government entities around the world.

Working at Board Level, Forrest has deep expertise in a wide range of domains including Business and Data Strategy, Insights, Analytics, AI, Blockchain and Big Data.  He has specific experience of the application of Distributed Ledger Technology for Film Distribution, Anti-Piracy, Drone Regulation and for Smart Contracts.

Nektarios Liolios is leading Startupbootcamp FinTech, the world’s largest accelerator for fintech start-ups as well as Startupbootcamp Insurance Technology (InsurTech) as co-founder and chief executive officer. He is also co-founder at Rainmaking Innovation, part of the global Rainmaking cooperative of entrepreneurs, leading innovation programmes across the financial services sector. Working to address the relationship between corporates and start-ups, Liolios works closely with the industry partners and investors for the Startupbootcamp fintech and insurtech programmes in London, New York, Singapore, Mumbai and Mexico City. Prior to Startupbootcamp, he led SWIFT’s Innotribe Start-up Challenge, facilitating interaction between start-ups and financial institutions. He is an outstanding thought leader driven by entrepreneurship, collaboration and the desire to change the industry.

Michael Rolph is co-founder and CEO at Yoyo, Europe’s fastest growing mobile payment and loyalty marketing platform. Rolph has spent the past 3 years combining his payments and marketing background to deliver some of the most innovate in-store technology for the UK’s leading coffee chains. Previously, he was an advisor at Azimo, a mobile and internet money transfer company, and a mentor at Seedcamp, where he helped jumpstart the entrepreneurial community in Europe.

Prior to that, Rolph was the non-executive director at The MoBank Group, which specialised in creating and operating transactional systems for mobile commerce, banking and payments. He also has experience working at Anthemis Group, PayPal, First Data Corporation and Barclaycard.

Luca Zorzino joined Illuminate in late 2015 after completing an MBA at INSEAD. He brings post-trade and enterprise technology experience to the team, having spent his early career at trading and risk management vendor Murex. Primarily responsible for client facing implementation services, he helped the redesign of the cross-asset post-trade functionality at numerous banks in South East Asia. At Illuminate, Zorzino in an observer to the board of portfolio companies AxeTrading, RegTek Solutions, TransFICC and Tookitaki. He is also a CFA Charterholder, holds a Masters in Management from Imperial College Business School, and trained as a computer engineer at Imperial College London.

Award winning writer and founder of The Asian Banker, Emmanuel is also the author of “On the eve of Finance 5.0” to be published in 2019. He has a background in management consulting and interviewed and has access to some of the leading chairmen, CEOs, policy makers and entrepreneurs around the world. He is the chief architect of this programme, having designed and delivered numerous training and consulting projects around the world. He has also served in several government advisory councils and consults with banks on investor and media relations, as well as on strategy formulation. His first book on the future of the finance industry will be published soon.